Geoscents - fusing the best of both worlds

Chapter 3: A dog's sense of smell - doing what no technique as yet can do

A dog's sense of smell - doing what no technique as yet can do

Fabel, the archaeology dog, is an expert at locating
buried human bones. Archaeologist Sophie Vallulv is
his trainer. In order to speed up the search, Fabel was
brought to Sandby Borg to locate the buried remains
before the excavation team arrived. Strapped to his
back was a Zeno 20 using the Esri® ArcGIS.

The idea came about when archaeologists began
thinking how they could record Fable’s search pattern
while still in the field. Previously Sophie had to
remember where Fabel had searched and where he
hadn't. When he discovered bones, Sophie would stick
a white flag in wherever Fabel dug.

Because of Sandby Borg’s size, it was extremely difficult
to remember everywhere the dog went. Archaeologists,
Nicholas Nilsson and Fredrik Gunnarsson at Kalmar Läns
Museum, suggested building a harness for Fabel and
putting the Zeno 20 in it.

“We tried it in the field and it works fantastic,” says
Sophie, “It’s the perfect device for Fabel, thanks to its
lightweight and accuracy.”

“I thought about buying a regular hunting dog GPS
device but the accuracy varied from 1 to 5 meters,
which is extremely bad for documentation purposes.
The Zeno 20 is capable of achieving 1 centimetre
accuracy without an external antenna,” explains Sophie.